​‘No progress’: IMF walks out of bailout talks with Greece

International Monetary Fund representatives have cut short negotiations with Greek officials in Brussels, after they failed to present a viable reform plan. The move has left Athens, due to repay €1.6 billion by the end June, on the edge of default.

“The ball is very
much in Greece’s court,” IMF spokesman Gerry Rice told the
media during a specially scheduled announcement, before his team
returns to Washington. “There are major differences between
us in most key areas. There has been no progress in narrowing
these differences recently.”

With wages and pensions at 80 percent of total public spending
“it’s not possible for Greece to achieve its medium-term fiscal
targets without reforms, and especially of pensions.” Rice also
told Athens to eschew “unsustainable” tax increases, but called
on Athens to collect it’s existing VAT taxes.

Greece is carrying €320 billion ($360 billion) of external loans,
but has been negotiating a cash-for-reforms deal for a €7.2
billion ($8.1 billion) tranche of a previously agreed bailout
that will allow it to stave off an imminent deal.

Athens has insisted that it has presented a reform plan, while
its delegation said it still believed that “intensifying
negotiations” could produce a deal “in the coming days.” Its
creditors have dismissed its promises as vague, and accused
Greece of engaging in brinkmanship.

“There is no more space for gambling; there is no more time
for gambling. The day is coming, I am afraid, that someone says
the game is over,” said Donald Tusk, the president of the
European Council, after chairing an EU-Latin America summit,
which he had to leave several times to negotiate with Greek Prime
Minister Alexis Tsipras. “We need decisions, not negotiations
now.”

"We are working to assure an agreement which will ensure that
Greece will recover with social cohesion and viable public
debts," Tsipras told the media after meeting the president
of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, shortly after
talks with German chancellor Angela Merkel and French president
Francois Hollande.

Tsipras was due to continue talks with Juncker on Friday, but in
view of the latest impasse, it may now be postponed.

Tsipras’s Syriza party was elected in January with backing from
traditional socialist voters and an overlapping group of those
simply tired of endless austerity measures from Brussels. Since
2008, Greece’s GDP has collapsed by almost a third.

Now, he is experiencing discontent and pressure from both camps.
On Thursday, Communist activists unveiled a giant banner with the
slogan "We have bled enough, we have paid enough. Take
matters in your own hands Greek people! Block the new measures
and long-term bailout agreements.”

It was hung from the finance ministry building in central Athens.
The banner depicted Tsipras as just another Euro-stooge,
alongside his more moderate predecessors.

At the same time voters in the center, also have reason for
discontent. The economy, which was inching towards a tepid
recovery, has now plunged into another recession under his
uncertain watch, while the latest figures show that unemployment
has risen to 26.6 percent.